Februarying.

This semester has started with quite a bang, and just when it will quiet down, the travel will begin. I'm headed to the Prairie Gate Literary Festival in Minnesota in two weeks. Before then, and closer to home, I will be reading at Case Western Reserve University on Valentine's Day at 6:00 pm in the Guilford Hall parlor. It's the debut reading of O Holy Insurgency, and I am super excited.

Current projects include finishing up Thievery by Seth Abramson, and The Poet Resigns: Poetry in a Difficult World by Robert Archambeau, both forthcoming from the University of Akron Press (in time for AWP, too!). In poetics news, we now have all essayists committed for a collection on fifteen innovative women poets. It's the little sibling of The Monkey & the Wrench, and we are over the moon about this project.

The biggest adjustment I am facing this semester is needing to carve out time to read. I typically teach novels classes in the summer, when I can read at the pool. Now I have to find time when I am conscious enough to retain Brideshead Revisited. Teaching British fiction is making me want to go back to England.

Thankful that the people of my family have been very healthy so far this winter (fingers crossed). Lots of snow. I know there are some snowdrops under that blanket.

Comments

Unfortunately I won't be able to attend the Prairie Gate festival, though it looks like fun.

A poet friend, Athena Kilgegaard, lives in Morris, Minnesota (where the festival takes place) and teaches at the U. of Minnesota campus there. Possibly you'll cross paths at some point while you're there.

I live in glorious Akron, Ohio, where I write poems, edit the Akron Series in Poetry, and teach literature and creative writing. I am the author of five full-length collections of poems, including A Sunny Place with Adequate Water, Small Enterprise, and the collaborative poetry collection The Czar, with Jay Robinson (all from Black Lawrence Press). I've received an NEA fellowship in poetry, and several individual excellence awards from the Ohio Arts Council. In 2019 my first collection of prose poems, Partial Genius, is due to drop from BLP.
In my spare time, I like to photograph garbage.